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Author Topic: To Cheese or not to Cheese: Limits for a Voodan RP  (Read 1683 times)

granny

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To Cheese or not to Cheese: Limits for a Voodan RP
« on: February 17, 2013, 06:25:47 PM »
Well... I have been thinking about the way I portray my Voodan considering that most of what a Voodan should have access mechanically we do not have it here in NWN. Maybe with the addition of a couple of feats it would be solved, I do not know. My main fear is that much of what I have chosen to add flavor to Mamere might be considered cheesing by the community. So I would like to open discussion in order to know how far I might proceed with my "emulation" of a Voodan.

1) Voodans might take cleric or druid to represent them. Only take druid if you are not going for the undead path.

2) Gris-gris as a way to prepare magic. You don't just pray for your god with the specific prayers of the day. You craft artifacts that will hold the powers you plan into using the next hours.

3) Bestow gris-gris (a feat we don't have here, it seems similar to craft wands although). The way I use it is somewhat like this: you don't cast buffs upon others, you offer them one of your artifacts and ask them to pronounce the correct enchantment.

4) Dance of the Dead (feat). This is one of the most interesting available feats in Souragne. It's not restricted to Voodans although. Through the Dance of the Dead, a caster would weave an amount of deadly spells and while doing this, they might take the appearance of a skeleton... or some corpse. We cannot currently get this "illusion" to happen with NWN mechanics. Would it be a bad way of RPing then? Maybe it would... as we don't see druids pretenting to be animals while casting

5) As a Voodan of a specific Loa would be restricted from three to four schools of casting (not to mention no heavy armor), schools close to the Domain of action of their Loa... some odd things might happen with NWN, like if I get the trickery domain for Ulwaddithri (the Consuming One and representative of the Sickening Air of the Swamp), I will have access to illusion spells as the special bonus from working with her (she should allow their Voodans only Necromancy, Conjuration and Transmutation). Currently I portray a relation with that idea of Sickening Air of the Swamp... as if the Voodan walked in some sort of Mists of Decay, shrouded from general perception, only being noticed when you get too close (and that glitch shows your presence, in the Voodan case, the bad smell). This is the thing that worries me: to portray an illusion like that would be frowned upon by you guys?

6) Voodan dolls and cia. Most of the work of a Voodan involves the crafting and use of voodan dolls, tokens, charms, runes and other artifacts. We don't have a crafting skill for consecrated/ desecrated items. Neither we get voodan dolls after each prayer/ section of crafting. Not to mention to be quite odd for you as a Voodan to need to pay the shop seller for the Voodan Doll that you -should- be able to craft. When I first thought of Mamere, I gone with her RPing that she'd craft them and would have hold of them, even if I didn't get any item in my inventory to portray them. Then a DM gave me 3 dolls, from which I only have one after the event we ran (it should be one artifact per spell I'd be able to cast on that day, making this kind of thing to keep items for them on my inventory something that would bother mechanics a lot... so I prefer RP). Maybe if anyone taking cleric/druid as their class and choosing Voodan as religion would be granted access to at least one voodan doll with 1 per day curse or without any spell, just so to be able to represent better their religion...
"We all are (monsters), pretty dancer. Deep down inside all of us, there's a monster. Some spend their lives trying to fight it. They fail. Some coexist unhappily with their beast. They are miserable (...) you and I celebrate it" Anton Misroi

RigorMortis

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Re: To Cheese or not to Cheese: Limits for a Voodan RP
« Reply #1 on: February 18, 2013, 04:45:42 PM »
I see almost all of these as RP fair game, as long as it doesn't give you some sort of advantage you would have had outside your normal class features, this is fine.

Example of Cheesing that ruins emmersion: You break a voodoo doll, you promptly PM someone that they are broken to pieces. That's Cheesing in a harmful way.

Example of Cheesing that aids emmersion: You cast Bigbys Crushing hand on someone, the spell acts as normal, but you RP holding a little voodoo doll that looks oddly like the person.

Anything that adds to the RP that doesn't give you any super mechanical or absurd RP advantage is fair game to me. Throw that voodoo, it's all good.

Bad_Bud

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Re: To Cheese or not to Cheese: Limits for a Voodan RP
« Reply #2 on: February 18, 2013, 06:45:58 PM »
Example of Cheesing that aids emmersion: You cast Bigbys Crushing hand on someone, the spell acts as normal, but you RP holding a little voodoo doll that looks oddly like the person.

If the character can cast Bigby's Crushing hand and the character has a voodoo doll in their inventory, there is no cheesing involved.  The spell is cast, the doll is held.  The rest is elaborated detail.

Dread

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Re: To Cheese or not to Cheese: Limits for a Voodan RP
« Reply #3 on: February 18, 2013, 08:08:07 PM »
Additionally, if you want to perform some sort of ritual or lay a curse, talk to a DM, they'd be more than happy to help you.